We've been working on our plays for Greek Theatre with Rob. Mine is Antigone, I chose to be Antigone because she is a fighter and I think that I can find myself a little bit in her character. The other character, Ismene is a coward, she is afraid to bury his dead brother because a law forbids that.
To help us get used to our characters, and to build our roles, we worked on two acting books: Stanislavski's technique and Uta Hagen. I learnt that, as an actor, you have to express your feeling not to show them.
At the beginning of every single lesson we were doing acting games, vocal and physical warm up, that woke us up, such as the tagging game and freeze frame and concentration exercises so we can be focused on what we have to do. I think that doing these games all the time train us to become good actors and help us develop our skills.
Engaging with an audience
The level 3 year 2 class came to see our rehearsals and they gave us a feedback. Mine and Sara's was really good, they said that we only need to practise our pronunciation. Rob also gave us a feedback, after every single rehearsing day, he said that it was genuinely good and that we should try to use the space that we have, to be aware that the audience has to see my facial expression, to face the audience and not let my hair cover my face, he said that we were listening and reacting to each other, to turn the melodramatic theatre into our thing, to be in the skin of the characters. He also tried to help all of us by writing some advice when we were rehearsing and talking about this at the end of the lesson when he was giving us the feedbacks.
Working at Medea
At the beginning of every each lesson we were doing acting games to help us get ready for the rehearsals, every single lesson had different games, that helped us improve our acting skills.
In our process, firstly, we gave our lines, we staged the piece together, everyone came up with ideas. I've been the main character, Medea, but I haven't got any lines, instead of that, I had to use my emotions to express the anger and frustration that Medea felt at that point of the piece. We practised together and after we learned our lines and what we have to do, we started to work together as an ensemble. We decided to place Medea in the centre of the supporting characters for the audience to see that the tension was directed to her. The staging of our group was placed in a semi-circle shape around Medea to allow the audience to see all of the characters, this helped them see details, expressions and body language. Each line given by each person was delivered with a specific action.
We also had to do some written work at the end of every each lesson, Sharon gave us log books and we wrote there everything that we were doing during the lesson.
We received feedbacks from our partners and this helped us improving ourselves during the performance.
What worked was that we were flexible, we had to change lines every time someone new came into our group. Our vocal projection was good, we created the tension that we needed. During rehearsals, we improved the staging by adding more movement.
What could have been better is that we could have been more creative with the movements, we should have been more organised, we should listen to others opinions/suggestions, we should be in class in time because our team depends on us.
This work prepares me to be a performer. It will help me when I'll have to work in an ensemble and it helps me get used to the work on a stage. Everything that I learnt during this process will help me in my future career as an actor.
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